Translational audacity

The other day I received in the mail E.P. Rice's book Kanarese Literature. "Kanarese" is an old word for the south Indian language now called Kannada, spoken in Karnataka state. Kannada is a Dravidian language spoken by around 60 million people as a native language and has one of the oldest and best-respected literatures of any of the Indian languages. When I traveled to India many years ago I stayed in Karnataka and so since then I've harbored an interest in Kannada that lately I decided to do something about - hence the impetus for ordering this book.

The book was published in 1921, and is a mix of history and translated examples of Kannada poetry. I'm reading through the history part, but because poetry excites me, I skipped ahead and read through a lot of the translated passages. This being the 1920s, the poetry has been, hilariously, rendered in strict meter and rhyme in the style of English poetry. It's such an audacious choice that no self-respecting scholar would make today - but it definitely makes the poetry more fun to read. I've included some passages below that particularly struck me, whether for good reasons or bad, with brief little commentaries - I've put them below the cut for convenience sake.

This is a prose example, a Vachana by Basava, circa the middle of the 12th century:

Oh pay your worship to God now - before the cheek turns wan, and the neck is wrinkled, and the body shrinks - before the teeth fall out, and the back is bowed, and you are wholly dependent on others - before you need to lean on a staff, and to raise yourself by your hands on your thighs - before your beauty is destroyed by age, and Death itself arrives. Oh, now worship Kūḍala-saṅgama-deva.

It's interesting in that it echoes Ecclesiastes 12:1-8, especially if you take the reading that the images in Ecclesiastes are meant to be taken as a metaphor for the body.

The next one is a funny, snarky little poem by a poet named Sarvajña, tentatively dated to AD 1600, titled "Fate":

They say that Lord Vishṇu once lived as a boar ;
That Śiva went begging from door to door ;
The Brahmā himself had his head cut away,
Who was it that settled their destiny, pray ? Sarvajña

The poet's name is not the answer - apparently he was in the habit of ending all his poems with his own name by way of a signature.

This is quite a lovely poem by Raṅgranātha, from his book Anubhavāmrita, or "Nectar of Fruition", from about 1675. It has a charmingly Protestant tone to it, explaining why he wrote his book in Kannada rather than in the more traditionally literary Sanskrit:

Scorn not my words because I seek
     In common speech deep truths to speak.
A glass may lack a Sanskrit name,
     Yet show one's features all the same.

The way to bliss is hard to find
     When wrapped within a Sanskrit rind ;
But, told in homely Kanarese,
     Is free for every man to seize.

'Tis then like plantain's luscious pulp
     When stripped of intervening skin ;
Or cocoanut which, broken, shows
     The rich sweet milk which lies within.

If one's intent to gain release
     From bonds that bind the soul,
What matters if he reach that goal
     By Sanskrit or by Kanarese?

The change in the rhyme scheme at the end is interesting - one wonders what it's meant to reflect in the original, if anything at all.

The limits of the poetic style can be illustrated by this appallingly awkward line from the Somēśvara Śataka by Puligere Soma (ca. AD 1200): "The sacrifice' crown is th' oblation of ghee". At other times he's more successful, though. Discussing the propensity of Kannada writers for double-entendre and word play using archaic Sanskrit forms, he says "a Kanarese poem defies anything like literal translation into another language. To give any idea of the spirit of the original it would be necessary to paraphrase freely, to expand the terse and frequent metaphors into similes, and to give a double rendering of many stanzas." He offers as an example the opening stanzas of the Jaimini Bhārata, first offering a prose translation by someone named Sanderson:

May the moon-face of Vishṇu, of Devapura, always suffused with moonlight smile, full of delightful favour-ambrosial rays - at which the chakora-eye of Lakshmi is enraptured, the lotus-bud heart of the devout expands, and the sea of the world's pure happiness rises and overflows its bounds - give us joy.

He then does exactly what he promised: he expands the poem in verse translation to cover the alternate meanings. I think the result is pretty good:

When the full moon through heaven rides,
Broad Ocean swells with all its tides ;
The lotus blossom on the stream
Opens to drink the silv'ry beam ;
And far aloft with trancéd gaze
The chakor bird feeds on the rays.

So when great Vishṇu's face is seen -
Whom men adore at Devapore -
Like to the sea, the devotee
Thrills with a tide of joy ;
Like the flower, that blissful hour
The heart of the devout expands ;
And Lakshmi Queen, with rapture keen,
Watches with ever-radiant face
For her great Consort's heavenly grace.
          O may that grace be ours !

I find him remarkably skillful with fitting the Indian names into the meter - a good illustration of this, and too good a closer to pass up, is a selection from the Kavirājamārga, ("The Royal Road of the Poets", AD 850), the earliest extant work in Kannada.

The Kanarese Country and People

In all the circle of the earth
     No fairer land you'll find,
Than  that where rich sweet Kannada
     Voices the people's mind.
'Twixt sacred rivers twin it lies -
     From famed Godāvarī,
To where the pilgrim rests his eyes
     On holy Kāveri.

If you would hear its purest tone
     To Kisuvōlal go ;
Or listen to the busy crowds
     Through Kōp'na's streets which flow ;
Or seek it in Onkunda's walls,
     So justly famed in song.
Or where in Puligere's court
     The learned scholars throng.

The people of that land are skilled
     To speak in rhythmic tone ;
And quick to grasp a poet's thought,
     So Kindred to their own.
Not students only, but the folk
    Untutored in the schools,
By instinct use and understand
     The strict poetic rules.

 So to sum up: Kannada literature is awesome, crazy verse translations from the 20s are awesome too. I've ordered the book on Hindi literature from the same series - let's see if it proves as entertaining.